THE DESIGN THAT TRIUMPH TURNED DOWN
1972 TRIUMPH DOLOMITE MICHELOTTI PROTOTYPE
Having designed the Triumph 1300, and then redesigned the car again as it morphed into the Toledo and 1500 (later known as the Dolomite), Michelotti was the logical person to turn to as Triumph – by then part of British Leyland – considered the model’s longer-term future.
The prototype’s resemblance to European contemporaries is stark, with Michelotti clearly influenced by both the Fiat 132 and BMW E12 5 Series, which were both released in 1972; witness the prominent ‘Hofmeister kink’ in the C-pillar, created by swapping the Dolomite’s curved rear quarterlight for an angular one.
Michelotti carried over two elements from the Dolomite that Triumph delivered to him and, arguably, he only gets away with one of them. The door panels, which are straight from the Dolomite, are well disguised by the new window frames – indeed, the deletion of the front quarterlight provides a much more modern look – but the windscreen is clearly that of a Sixties car.
We can only hope that Triumph would have given the car a square windscreen aperture, as was typical in the 1970s and which would have been consistent with the otherwise entirely angular prototype, if it had gone ahead with the prototype.
In the end, though, BL took Michelotti’s Dolomite proposal no further. In fact, it proved to be his last effort for Triumph; BL’s new ‘specialist division’ of Rover, Triumph and Jaguar was dominated by in-house designers.
Rather than turn Michelotti’s prototype into a car, which, having carried over so much of what was under the skin could have been production-ready as early as 1973 – giving BL a sharp looking saloon that would have appealed to Europeans, just as Britain entered the EEC. BL laboured on with the Dolomite until 1980, by which time its outdated looks saw declining sales from the mid-1970s onwards.
What might have been? We’ll never know, now.